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Don Reviews "Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse"

With the well-documented lack of my “Greek cred” (read geek cred), I from time to time get the Marvel and DC universes confused, especially when it comes to characters that I am not as familiar with. Even with popular heroes, these “multiverses” are bringing different versions of even characters I know, and that can get confusing. With “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” my personal Spidey-sense was really tingling.

Co-directed by Peter Ramsey (Rise of the Guardians) and first-timers Rodney Rothman & Bob Perischetti, Shameik Moore plays Miles Morales, a young man in “our” universe whose strict policeman father sends him to a prep school where he does not quite fit in. When he is bitten by a radioactive spider, he starts to change like Peter Parker (Chris Pine) did famously as the Kingpin (Liev Schrieber) completes work on a machine that can open a portal to alternate dimensions in an attempt for him to bring his family back to life from one of them. In doing so, Spider Heroes from other dimensions including Gwen Stacy (Hailee Stanfield), Spider-Man Noir (Nicholas Cage), and older Parker (Jake Johnson), and even Spider-Ham (John Mulaney) enter the picture, but with all of this going on, it could rip apart all of their dimensions and homes.

This is a CGI-style of animation that has been used before, but there is a lot of shifting of focus on objects within the scenes that I did not like. There were also some shading that made it look like I was watching a 3-D movie without the glasses, and it was just distracting. The voice work is fine here, but nothing that blew me away.

This is a two-hour film, and it really felt that way for me. There just seems to be a lot of unneeded scenes thrown in along with sequences that went on too long. Even though I liked Miles’ story and the comedic things that were added, all of the alternate dimensions got to be too much at a point. This is still a good film and does a good job of introducing new characters into the Spider-Man universe, and I will definitely recommend this film (especially if you are a comic book fan) as a Saturday matinee showing.